Ok, I'll try to keep this as short as possible, and in sequential order. About a month ago, my hard drive crashed, so I haven't synced my phone since before then. My hard drive is still not booting, but I re-installed windows to a new hard drive, and thanks to some programs, am able to access the files on the old drive. Last night, I lost my phone. Well, I left it in a cab. Unfortunately, it was at 4% battery power, and soon died, so I only got 2 updates to the location. Today, the new owners, turned the phone on, and I got a dozen updates on the location before it quit updating. I jumped in the car and drove over to what my best guess was the house where it was. The location included an accuracy that had about 4 houses in it, but I was just going to knock on all the doors and ask. The first house I stopped at, I simply said "I'm sorry to bother you, I lost my iPhone last night and was able to track it to this house, I'm willing to reward you for it's return." They returned it, but they did a restore and update via iTunes, so I'm now at 3.1.3, and unjailbroken. I know i have SHSH on file with Cydia, but I have no idea how to downgrade it, yet. I saw threads on here about it and will dig, but here are my questions:

1. As I said, I'll dig through the other threads, but how does one downgrade back to 3.1.2?
2. Is it possible to re-install iTunes and pull my files from my old hard drive so that when I sync it back, I get all my settings and programs back? I know some that I installed via Cydia, like Google Voice app, I'll just have to get again, but I'd like to get back to as close as it was as possible.
3. Is there a certain version of iTunes I need, or does the latest one work?
4. Anything else I need to know or do that you can think of?

Sorry, posted all that from comp which shows my device. Yes, it's a GS. I read up on how to downgrade on a few posts, but want to get it right. I think I'd have to get iTunes loaded with my old files first, but I don't know. I couldn't help sharing the story, I know it made the post lengthy.

P.S. I can't believe I forgot to mention that I used iLocalis to locate and recover my phone. Had I used it right, I could have locked it and prevented them from restoring using iTunes.

I contacted apple support to inquire how I could pull the files from my old hard drive and what files I should look for. They claimi can simply install a new version of iTunes and then just pull the iTunes.exe over and it will work. I have a hard time believing my settings and information is somehow magically written into the executable.

If I can get back to 3.1.2 as detailed on jailbreakmatrix.com, does anyone know how I could get iTunes to sync back my data to my last sync with the files on a different hard drive?

For those of you following along...Downgraded and jailbroken thanks to gaetanospqr's post on a thread on here, but still need to get all my contacts, apps, and settings back.

I couldn't do that because my itunes that i last synced with was installed on another hard drive. My current computer is a complete new install of windows.

And I know they were going to keep it. Thing I can't quite understand is how they got it. I got it back off two kids, maybe 10 and 14. I lost it at 10PM on a Saturday night. I can only think the cab driver took the phone home and gave it to his kids. They claimed they restored it so they could call me. Yeah, funny, I have no phone and you erased all the data, how can you call me!?

I haven't looked into downgrading much because im still on 3.1.2, but my friend followed a guide to downgrade from 3.1.3 to 3.1.2 and now his jailbreak is tethered. Is this permanent or is there a way to fix this aswell? He did not have a tethered jailbreak before (its an older 3GS)

As a follow up, I have the person's email address that they used to restore my phone. It was still in my App store account. Looking for ideas on what to do with it.

As for the iTunes, I found that I had to go to the My Music/iTunes folder and everything was in there that I needed. Except my address book, but I got that from another location. Getting all my apps and settings back is slow as I forget alot of what I had, especially the apps in the background, like SBSettings, Winterboard, etc.

Well, I was able to pull up her facebook, and wasn't comfortable with sending her adult crap. She looks to be about 14. I will say that I emailed her using a junk email account, and she was pretty cooperative in that she doesn't even live where my phone was found. Turns out, the cab driver took my phone, gave it to one of his kids that she is friends with. They happeened to go to this kids grandmother's house and use the iTunes there to restore the phone which was set up with her account. She sounds like she didn't know about it and actually had to go do some digging to find out why her account was on my phone. I don't feel so bad against her anymore, but now I'm after that driver. What kind of person takes something clearly lost home and gives it to their kids?